


Bites back

by Snatchfer



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Casual philosophical references, Edited, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Family Issues, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I really went ham on the vocab in this one guys be warned, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Injury, Post-Manburg Festival, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27669100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snatchfer/pseuds/Snatchfer
Summary: The Manburg festival doesn't end the way it's supposed to.Tommy and Techno spend the days figuring out how to heal.///Tommy steeled himself. He had wanted to say something - something meaningful, something strong, something that would put him at ease. But saying those things had never been his strong suit, anyway. It had been Wilbur’s job, once.They stared down the side of the building, sidestepping holes and weak spots in the roof like a game of hopscotch.The words he wanted to say didn’t reveal themselves.He’d regret that.“Be safe.”
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & TommyInnit
Comments: 6
Kudos: 141





	Bites back

**Author's Note:**

> welp. i guess i'm finally posting this.
> 
> naturally the same disclaimer as always when it comes to rpf, you know the drill. As far as i know, techno is ok with it as long as it's not shipping, and tommy doesn't really care either way so long as he doesn't see it, to my understanding.
> 
> so anyways. im a bit rusty, since i havent written since the beginning of quarantine, but i hope this turned out okay.

_“This seems like a nice friendly thing Schlatt’s doing,” he’d said, eyes unfolding like sinister butterfly wings for the first time. “Tommy, are we the bad guys?”_

_His feet had felt like blades of grass in the dirt, and he remembered that the sun had looked like a coiled molten scar in the dip between two barbed spruce trees. And they had walked, and Wilbur kept speaking, sentences slipping from his tongue like threaded silver - guileful, minacious, coy._

_“No.” Even in the memory, it feels like a faraway response, like the words hadn’t truly left through his throat, but more; the thought had been swindled from his mind, like Wilbur had taken all the doubts yoked to it and spun unnerve into his reply like twisted sheep’s wool or brandished charisma._

_“Why not?”_

* * *

Tommy wakes, and it is day. Clouds curl overhead like twists of bedsheets, as if cradling the epicentre of a mollified storm. A tuft of dented grass sprays shadows across his face, dust and dewdrops balanced along the curve of their surface. Wind passes silently overhead; grass too short to rustle, leaves too broken to try. Perhaps on any other occasion, the birds would be playing in the overhead breeze, but the sky is silent of their calls.

All that remains of sound is an odd whistling, blowing high and wide through the crater - echoing starkly like the empty bottles Tubbo used to play music on when they were bored together.

But he doesn’t notice any of this at first, because a bleeding ache has sunk into the foundations of his skin; the marrow of his throbbing bones; the scorched chasm where his heart used to be. It must have been in the wee hours of the morning when he’d last been conscious, but now the sun is closing in on its peak, glinting in repose.

For some time, he watches it rise from the corner of his eye, uncomfortably hot and sweating showers. His right side nictates like a malfunctioning eye, stinging each time.

A nearby rock, overturned but sheltered under a narrow niche of dirt and cobbled grass is a hotspot for small bugs. The roots of carrots peer out above him, blackened but otherwise edible. He thinks about nibbling on one, but can’t bring himself to.

An earwig plods over the rock, pincers twitching. It’s missing a leg.

Midday comes and goes - and at the point where the sun starts to sink, he begins to remember that come nighttime, he will be in danger. Mobs won’t care that he can’t bring himself to eat under-ripe carrots or pull himself to his feet. Skeletons are literally brainless, let alone capable of compassion.

With a heave, he hoists himself onto his knees, and instantly feels his brain swoop in his skull as he goes lightheaded. Black spots splatter across his vision like tar, and the returning ache blinds the nerves all over his body. Dimly, he recognises something oozing down his right side.

Minutes pass, and sorely he finally raises a shaking hand to touch it. A short scream tears straight from his throat and between the cage of his teeth; clicking closed as breaths billow from his chest like sails in the wrong wind. His hand comes away red.

Through the din rushing in his ears, he acknowledges that this must be the cause of his fever. A wheeze blurts from his tongue straight into the dirt he’d collapsed face first into.

Eventually, his back begins to ache, and slowly he begins to roll each muscle into action, pulling himself into his best approximation of good posture - he’d never been good at that, anway. He’s got to get used to this hazy malaise at some point, there’s no reason to wait around when he’s on a time limit. He doesn’t know how long it will take him to get… wherever he’s going.

That’s about the time when he recalls - Tubbo’s underground base. The one he and Wilbur had fled to, the one stocked up with all sorts of potion ingredients. The one underground. Not up here.

His head tumbles, brain going to smoke and white fog flashing like a film over his eyes as he stands. He blinks, and he’s on the ground again. His right side tingles with the aftershocks of what must have been white-out pain. It feels like ants are crawling all over him, and he refuses the urge to claw them all off in a fit of angry hurt.

This time, when he gets to his feet, he takes it slow. The world goes pale around him, and he stumbles into a wall of earth and peat that comes up to his waist. Stiff stalks of scorched wheat plunge into the air from dirt, trimmed to the length of his fingers with blackened ends. With a start, he realises he’s waist deep in the farm by Eret’s tower.

He takes a breath, drinking in the clean air, unclouded by the must of damp peat and dust. Looking out and up the hill, the rest of the farm is mostly in the same condition. Eret’s tower is - well, it’s missing a wall or two - or three. And most of the floor. He looks back down at the displaced rock from earlier, and realises that it’s a chunk of andesite from the wall. He looks away.

He looks behind, down the hill. And down, and down - and further down. The lake water has settled into stagnant puddles and murky ponds in ditches between overturned earth and wedges of loose rock. The podium, the throne, the red-wool carpet leading up the stands - gone. The space travel project, party island, the prime path.

When he looks down, it’s not even L’manberg anymore. It’s certainly not _Mangerg_. It’s… exactly what Wilbur must have wanted. A crater where his home used to be.

He chokes on a stupid sob and steadies himself against the squelchy peat, blinking back tears he doesn’t remember springing forth. Through watery eyes, he spies the telltale purple stairs of crimson fungus stalk.

In the same moment, a figure enters his vision, bleary, unknowable, dangerous. (He topples over). In this state, anything is dangerous, especially an enemy. (he blinks at the sun). There’s no way he could fight back. (It doesn’t blink back). There’s no -

He feels it, the moment the figure spots him. Dappled against the bitter sun, something changes in the light that shines off the person’s armour. Something like a demeanour. A certain flavour leaves the air and enters his system; in the lungs and out the nose. Brutal, metallic, like frost on a taiga forest floor at the moment before the sun rises. He knows this person like he knows home-baked potatoes, smeared with chives and sour cream, worn leather and tart smoke - metal shavings and wooden splinters, wreathed string and knotted fists - cold blood and - 

He sees the shine of a glass bottle, reflected so brightly the rest of the world seems to quiver and fade. Something pink and bubbly, fizzing spritely against his skin like pleasant pins-and-needles. Unbidden, the taste of effervescent smoke and aimless cries sinks into his bones, and his right side starts to twist pinched skin together with an invisible needle and thread. Unmistakably, Ghast tears and Netherwart. 

For what feels like the first time, when he breathes next, it’s not a struggle. And the time after that, it’s even better. By the third inhale, it could even be called easy.

He lies there for several seconds, wondering (knowing) who could’ve dropped that regeneration potion on him. Who would have even prepared a splash potion of regeneration, anyway? Gapples are ten times better, that’s just -

Technoblade leans over him. He blinks again, not having noticed his eyes popping open until the moment he spots the red of his cape.

“Techno,” he mumbles, eyelids dancing against the golden outline over Technoblade’s shoulder. “Why… why’d you got… got spl’sh potion…?”

Techno raises a hand to block the sun from Tommy’s eyes. “Uh, I got them from Tubbo’s secret base.”

Of course. Tubbo. Who else?

* * *

_“I’m excited, Tommy - I’m having a great time.”_

_They had scaled the slab of granite quietly, Wilbur keeping an eye out for witnesses while Tommy heaved himself onto the misshapen cobblestone bridge by Eret’s tower. He scanned the world below them, behind Tommy, where Tommy knows without looking are rows of carrots, potatoes, and wheat sprawling down the hill. The wide lake they’d once settled around with music and stories and warm light - and beyond that. A newly established view, now that the walls were gone._

_He hadn’t wanted to see any of that. Tommy only had eyes for Wilbur._

_“Wilbur, look at me.” Wilbur’s eyes had done that little dithering thing, drifting to the ground and then back over Tommy’s shoulder. Something he’d started doing not long after he’d made his bargain with Dream. “Look at me.”_

_“Hm.” No change._

_“Please -” the reaction was instant upon the moment the word left his mouth; Wilbur’s lips had scrunched up like a puckered pufferfish, eyes unmoving, even as his head turned. It was like he knew what Tommy was about to ask. “Don’t do this.”_

_He got to his feet, brushing crumbled gravel from the knees of his old-new clothes. He remembers standing to his full height, and still having no chance of matching Wilbur’s. “You don’t have to be a villain -”_

_It was an ability he hadn’t needed to cultivate until Pogtopia - until they’d lost the election - the ability to sense the change in mood from Wilbur. It was like reading the room, except hyper-fixated to one person. It was almost impossible to tell when Wilbur would blow - like dynamite sticks that started themselves at random._

_Something innate unfolded within him the instant Wilbur’s eye spasmed, like he’d eaten especially sapid chilly recently, although Tommy knew that wasn’t the case. (It had been potatoes for weeks; potatoes mashed in milk and whatever seasoning Technoblade scrounged up in his freetime, fried potato wedges with the same. Or Tommy’s favourite, especially on the days when Techno pulled out a drawstring bag of sliced chives; baked potatoes with sour cream he’d made himself)._

_The hairs on the backs of his arms stood on end._

_Wilbur’s expression - a snarled, brackish thing, nothing like how he used to be. Even his anger was corrupt in comparison to what he looked like before._

_“If I can’t have it, no one can!”_

_After that, Tommy didn’t ask again._

* * *

They sit in the hollowed out area below Tommy’s old base - the old L’manburg embassy. It’s a mess under here; cracked blackstone and split wooden fences, stone platforms busted into cobbles, a splintered outcropping of netherrack hanging from the ceiling. One side of the cavern is completely missing, allowing clean, cold air to burn into his nose - every breath feels like his first. Dirt and long tresses of grass spill over the edge of the overhang.

It’s a little broken down, but it’s shelter. And it’s lit up - mobs won’t spawn here.

It’s better than sitting in Pogtopia.

It’s better than sitting in Manburg.

It’s better than most places, when everywhere feels like the nightmare version of a memory. At least here, the most he remembers is the grueling work of putting down blackstone bricks, freshly harvested and hewn by himself.

He tries not to remember the other things that happened here. Just the stupefied humour when he came back home one day to find that Dream had dug up his whole front yard, backyard, and everywhere in between.

Things had been simpler then.

_Wilbur’s fist cracking against an oak button -_

No. Just the campfire crackling.

He turns away from the fighting ring and happens straight into Technoblade’s gaze. The reflection of the fire pools in his eyes like it was meant to be there. It’s only when Techno glances to his own hand that Tommy realises he’s being handed a wooden bowl of mashed potatoes. Crushed black pepper, and potato mash - mixed with water, not milk, this time.

His right side jumps when he reaches out to take it, like he’s still injured. It doesn’t hurt, it’s just… annoying. It feels like he should be hurting, but he can’t bring himself to feel much of anything right now.

Techno begins to eat his share of the mashed potato. It’s piping hot, even Tommy can feel it from where the bowl sits in his lap, but Techno doesn’t even flinch. He wonders, idly, if Techno has ever felt pain. He wonders how he feels about what happened. He wonders if Wilbur ever ended up telling him his plan. He wonders if Techno would approve of that.

He looks down at his own mashed potato.

“Wilbur’s dead.” He doesn’t really know where it comes from. Some deep cavity where the question had clawed out a space to live, incendiary knowledge frozen into the rounded walls.

Techno’s eyes move without his face, red in form, blue in matter. “Probably.”

He wants to say - something. Anything.

_Don’t you care? He’s your brother. You grew up together._

_We grew up together._

_Shouldn’t that matter?_

_Doesn’t it?_

Tommy looks at his mashed potatoes, feeling hungry. There are holes inside of him, and that parts of him are leaking out through the gaps for anyone to see. He wonders if Technoblade can see it, the way he’s been going hollow since he woke up.

He says none of this.

Instead, “Don’t you know?”

Technoblade pauses. Then, as if to distract himself, he takes another bite of mashed potato. It probably doesn’t taste as good without the milk, but at least there’s seasoning.

Some time passes, and Tommy goes back to staring at his food. Steam whisks itself away in the wind passing through their little cave. He becomes increasingly thankful that the food is warm, and is beginning to consider trying for a nibble when Technoblade speaks again.

“Didn’t want to check.”

* * *

_“Tubbo!”_

_Tubbo had looked back, a nervous smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah?”_

_Tommy steeled himself. He had wanted to say something - something meaningful, something strong, something that would put him at ease. But saying those things had never been his strong suit, anyway. It had been Wilbur’s job, once._

_They stared down the side of the building, sidestepping holes and weak spots in the roof like a game of hopscotch._

_The words he wanted to say didn’t reveal themselves._

_He’d regret that._

_“Be safe.”_

* * *

The next morning, he stares at the ceiling, bathed in a warm red cape and not wanting to leave. The sun hasn’t even risen yet, but Technoblade is nowhere to be found. The wind has died down overnight, so the smoke from the charcoal curls upwards undisturbed, blackening the cobbled ceiling. His breath fogs the cool air.

He remembers being younger - he remembers pretending to be dragons with Tubbo. Baby dragons, they had insisted, _and that’s the only reason we can’t breathe fire yet_.

Time blurs together. He blinks, and for an instant, he feels a hand running through his hair, probably tangled with snarls and knots by now. The next moment, the sun is up, and the campfire has long died. He gets to his feet.

He almost expects to collapse, like he had yesterday, but there’s no pain. His joints bend smoothly against each other, like warm and cold winds meeting head on and splitting off into parallel streams.

The clasps on Techno’s cape are too wide apart to sit on his shoulders properly, so he ties a bow with the strings over his chest, and huddles into the fur lining. Techno moves so easily in it, but Tommy can barely bring himself to slough over to the gaping maw of an opening without folding under the weight.

Technoblade wouldn’t leave his cape behind, would he? So he must be coming back at some point. “Must be,” he agrees with himself, just to have the sensation of a conversation.

Overgrown grass stretches out before him in long troves. Stalks with feathered ends, little bluestems, and plain old overdeveloped normal grass. Poppies and dandelions aspire in between, blended almost too deeply into the grass to see. Dew speckles the ground thickly, turning his scorched trousers dark brown.

The right leg of his trousers are especially crispy, barely hanging onto his knees by charred threads. The skin beneath is healthy and pink, almost deceptively so. It feels like a lie just seeing it, and something bitter rises on his tongue. He feels sick.

His feet fold underneath him, neatly depositing themselves over the side of the bank that the opening in the cave sits atop. He closes his eyes, feeling the solid weight of Techno’s cape over his shoulders and down his back; the yellowed grass fisted in his palms. It still feels like he’s falling.

Techno appears some time later, his striding gait paired with the swing of a packed satchel. A satchel he’s sure he didn’t have at the festival - he must have gone back to Pogtopia. The thought alone makes him want to throw up.

He pauses at Tommy’s side, looking down at him. He looks strange without the cape, although it’s not the first time Tommy’s seen him without it. He’s just… smaller.

“Hey,” he says. There’s something dry about his throat.

Techno inclines his head. “I found some things to patch up your clothes with.” With what constitutes the equivalent of a knowing look, he deposits a bottle of water in Tommy’s lap, and heads over to their small camp. He doesn’t ask for the cape back.

It must have been over a day since the festival, but each second passes so far apart from each other that it feels like it’s been an eternity.

At the same time, it feels like it was just yesterday he and Tubbo were digging out that stupid tunnel.

Stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

* * *

Tommy wraps himself in Techno’s cape while Techno sits with his trousers and spare patches of fabric. It’d probably be easier to just make new ones, but he’s kind of glad that he doesn’t have to say goodbye to these. There’s no particular reason. It’s just something vague and relieved tripping around in the corridors of his head.

He watches the needle flick in and out of the patches with a steady hand. He wonders where Techno got the skill from, or if he’s self taught. Did Phil ever teach him that? Would he have taught Tommy, too? 

“Techno?”

“Hm?”

_“Hm.” His face didn’t change._

He shakes himself out of it, scrubs at the instinctual hair raising over the skin of his arms. “What are we gonna do now?”

“Ah, I was plannin’ on gettin’ my stuff and then heading out.” Something cool creeps into the pit of Tommy’s stomach. He rubs at his belly to soothe the feeling, but all it does is freeze his already cold fingers further. He tugs the cape closer, tries to play it cool.

“So, uh. Do you want your cape back, then?”

This actually gives Techno pause, this time. He pulls the needle the rest of the way through, before setting his hands in his lap. He examines the thread, or maybe pretends to. “It’s a cloak, not a cape, Tommy,” he starts, rubbing a thumb over the needle mindlessly. “And you're comin’ with, okay?”

Tommy swallows, feeling the cold creature recede a little. “Okay,” he mumbles.

* * *

_Wilbur laughed all the time. Tommy still thinks it was like a habit for him, back then, rather than a real, true laugh. But he still laughed, and when he did, it was like the most amazing thing. Especially when it was at one of Tommy’s jokes. Those were the best kinds of laughs._

_Philza laughed all of the time, too. He remembers thinking that it was because he enjoyed the laughing itself, more than the joke, perhaps._

_Technoblade never laughed as much or as loudly as the others, but when he did, it was the kind of thing that made Tommy take a moment to enjoy. Something had made Technoblade laugh, and that was awesome._

_Tommy also liked laughing. He still does. But more than anything, he loved to make other people laugh. He loved when Technoblade tried to talk over his own laughter, or when Wilbur laughed so hard, he had to tilt his head back to experience the full pressure of it. He loved when Philza kept laughing in between sentences, like beads on a string._

_Tommy liked laughing, but most of all, he liked when other people laughed._

* * *

His trousers are now patched with quadrilateral pieces of red fabric, too thick to be anything close to what the rest of them are made of, but it’s a comforting thing. He knows this material must have come from Techno’s own stash. It feels the same as his “cloak”. (Cape is a way cooler word, anyway).

He stares down the Prime path, stretching away into the distance, between the remains of Ponk’s first lemon tree, Walmart, the socialising club, Punz’ estate, and then further away than he can see. He’s walked this path a million and one times - it was here before he came, and it will stay long after he’s gone, even if he’s not here to repair it.

It’s a strange thought; leaving, and not coming back. He wonders if he’ll follow through. He hasn’t even gone back to Manburg yet, hasn’t said goodbye. He spared all expenses when he forced himself to take one last look around his old home, and only then because he knew he’d regret it if he didn’t just take one last look.

He’d knocked on the worn wooden chests, peered at the old war room and all its outdated signs. He’d smoothed a hand down the stone corners, reminisced in the recess where the jukebox used to be, pointlessly righted an uneven bar along the railway tracks.

Patted the wooden bench, facing the horizon. 

He’d had to hold Techno’s cloak to do it, although he hoped he hadn’t noticed. Unlikely, but at least neither of them mentioned it.

And now he’s here, at the top of the prime path, staring into the domain of the Dream SMP, with Eret at the very end. He wonders where everyone is - what they’re doing. If they know. If they’re mourning. If they’ll care that a pair of outlaws are about to go strolling through their territory.

Techno strolls up behind him, rubbing his palms over the seams of his trousers. “Well,” he denotes, tugging a matted piece of fur-lining into place, very clearly having been nibbled on. “The horses are all set up.”

Tommy smiles, just a little. Allows it to fade away, and imagines the waves swashing against the beach, back and forth. Smile a little, smile not at all - and then again. He looks at his feet.

Wind tousles his hair like a hollow gesture of comfort, but it still feels so wrong to be leaving the place he’s lived for the past however-long. Longer than Technoblade, and longer than a lot of people here. Certainly longer than Schlatt. Longer than Wilbur.

Longer than Tubbo. Only just.

They go by Tubbo’s old base on the way to the Nether portal, probably still just wilted glass panes and cracked rubble. The brick walls are too tall to see over much, and the holes in the walls are too low to see properly through, and he’s never really thought about that before, but it’s a small relief. 

In the end, that doesn’t do much. They pass by the open port, and he’s already looking, so he sees it. The empty space where Tubbo’s first ever house was.

The tree farm is mostly intact, leaves glancing against one another placidly. He remembers kidnapping villagers; Spins, the bee who kept on turning; meticulously labelled chests, and -

Phukkit. He still has Phukkit. Tubbo’s equivalent disc, Tubbo’s Mellohi and Cat. Tubbo’s pet from all that time ago. It’s in his Enderchest.

Something strange happens to his head, then, that he can’t quite put a finger on. It’s like his skull hatched open like an egg and his brain slipped into the open air like a helium balloon. 

He spots a stray gnarled piece of glass by the gate, and picks it up before he realises what he’s doing. He keeps it anyway.

He feels a tug on his neckerchief; a gift from a long time ago. It’s dark green. The most familiar dark green there is. The most familiar _green_ there is - the most welcoming colour.

When he looks up, it’s Technoblade there, face as calm as ever, saying something in his usual tone of voice. He can’t hear the words over the roaring in his ears, but the sound is comforting all the same.

Right. They can’t just hang around in enemy territory. 

When Techno goes to take his hand away, Tommy grabs his sleeve, and doesn’t care that they can both see it, clear as day.

Technoblade takes a step forward, and Tommy follows.

* * *

_In the first war, Tommy had been spritely and ready for danger. He’d been angry, and fire, and just a little reckless. Maybe._

_The world had kicked him down, had held the edge to his throat, and Dream SMP had been the blade that did it. They’d knocked him over, again and again. Beat down after beat down, Arrows, TNT, two towers. Eret had betrayed them._

_The world had kicked him down, had kicked them all down. But he got back up, spitting and screaming and biting and ready to fight._

_What he’d failed to realise, back then, had been the reality of things._

_The world bites back._

* * *

“Do you think Dad knows?” He blurts, the evening after they meet up with Awesamdude. He’d only known Tubbo for a short time, but they seemed to have become fast friends. It’s nice to have someone who understands, just a little.

It’s not that Techno and Tubbo never got along, because they mostly did, but there’s something different about getting along with Tubbo and being his friend. That’s probably the same with all people, but it feels different when it’s Tubbo. It feels like it _should_ be different. 

They’re sitting on the hill above Sam’s base. The grass is thin and yellowed, and bugs croak at each other from their invisible hiding places. Even from up here, he can hear the whirring and methodical _clank, clank_ of machines down below. Techno had complained about the annoying high-pitched buzz of electricity, but Tommy can’t hear that at all. It’s like Technoblade really is super human, sometimes.

He half expects Techno to ask what he’s referring to, but it must be obvious, because he doesn’t reply for a long while. They listen to the birds cawing at each other over the wind, drifting nimbly over the moors. The woodsmoke rises between them, cutting away any chance at catching Techno’s expression, although he’s certain it’d be mostly internal.

Then, as if he hadn’t said a word, Techno pulls open his satchel (the contents of which he’d shared out between himself and Tommy to bear) and retrieves four medium-sized potatoes. Then, a small cream-coloured drawstring bag, and finally, a round wooden pot he recognised in a faraway, instantaneous manner.

“Is that…?”

Techno shrugs. “Couldn’t just let it go bad by itself down in Pogtopia.”

They prepare the potatoes, and then deposit them over the fire, which is crackling away with minimal smoke by now. They silently watch the potato skins pucker around the edges for what must be quite some time, before Techno speaks again.

“We should probably be the ones to tell him,” he admits.

Tommy swallows, then nods.

The sky is already turning pink and pinkish-orange at the edges. What few clouds there are, are already going dully the same shades of colour. Pinkish-orange - or salmon pink. That stupid joke about not being able to say the word “salmon” in Wilbur’s presence wasn’t worth much now that he’s gone.

“What do you think happened to that salmon?” he asks, unthinkingly.

Techno pauses. “The one he had a kid with, you mean?” He nods. “Uh, I guess she did salmony things. What do fish do?”

Tommy shrugs. It’s a stupid thought anyway. Wilbur never told them much - he might’ve even just been straight up lying. He wouldn’t put it past him, maybe for the sake of some joke he’ll never be able to tell, now.

When the potatoes are done, they overstuff them with Tommy’s homemade sour cream, and spread chives all over, like they’re all back in Pogtopia together and overdoing it for the sake of keeping it together. He doesn’t even care that they don’t have a reliable source of food anymore, and that Wilbur will never get to enjoy this with them ever again.

When he takes his first bite, it’s a hollow gesture. He’s not hungry. By the last bite, he feels full, with the lingering taste of thick cream and foraged herbs and woodsmoke and smooth potato.

It’s almost a nice feeling.

**Author's Note:**

> P.s i've been reading a lot of fic from this fandom recently, and i notice a lot of you make your own little patterns for a linebreak. They look very pretty, but it really doesn't help disabled folks with screen readers.
> 
> Screen readers will read out all your + . and O. i take it you're all kind of young and pretty new to writing fic on ao3, so here's a Top Tip: use hard rule lines. in HTML (what i use) just put in [hr] but with triangle brackets instead, like these: <>.
> 
> and if you use Rich Text there should be a button you can use - it looks like a normal line. just a heads up! :)


End file.
